Consumer History | Pepsi — The Fountain at Bradham's Pharmacy, Middle and Pollock
· 1898-8
Personal memoryBy kevin · · updated · Report an issue
Find memories left by people near you.
Distribute Bounty
This will distribute the bounty equally among all qualifying memories. This action cannot be undone.
Cancel Bounty
Are you sure you want to cancel this bounty? The remaining amount will be refunded to your account.
Success!
Operation completed successfully.
Error
Something went wrong.
Consumer History | Pepsi — The Fountain at Bradham's Pharmacy, Middle and Pollock
kevin
People treat Pepsi as a Purchase, New York campus that arrived already named against Coca-Cola.
The first glass was mixed here, at the corner of Middle and Pollock Streets in New Bern.
Caleb Davis Bradham, born in Chinquapin in 1867, left medical school in Maryland when his father's business failed and came home to open a drugstore. Like other fountains of the 1890s, the shop sold soda as a digestive as much as a treat.
In the mid-1890s he served a caramel and kola mixture he called Brad's Drink. On 28 August 1898 he renamed it Pepsi-Cola, from dyspepsia, the period word for indigestion. Pepsin was not in the formula. The name was a claim about the stomach, not an ingredient list.
That claim was the mechanism. A small-town pharmacist could not advertise a national brand. He could put a house formula on the marble and let the corner traffic decide whether the drink belonged next to the prescriptions.
Demand pulled him out of the shop. The Pepsi-Cola Company was incorporated in late 1902 with Bradham as president. The name was registered as a trademark in 1903. By 1904 syrup sales were near 20,000 gallons. Bottling followed in 1905. By 1910 the firm listed some 250 franchises in 24 states and held its first bottler convention in New Bern.
Sugar rationing in the First World War wrecked the cost structure. Bradham lost the company in the early 1920s. Later owners rebuilt the brand. PepsiCo, the present parent, dates from the 1961 merger with Frito-Lay.
The original drugstore burned shortly before Bradham died in 1934. A later building occupies the lot at 256 Middle Street. A state marker and a store fitted as a birthplace stand on the corner. The pin is the public intersection, not a surviving 1898 soda fountain.
Photo: the Birthplace of Pepsi building at Middle and Pollock, via Wikimedia Commons.
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
changes?
delete this memory?
We detected that you have a Blox in your crypto wallet! We will import the Blox into your account.
Click on done below to complete the import.
Welcome Back!
Sign in to preserve cherished moments
Don't have an account?
Welcome!!
Sign up and start preserving cherished moments
?
?
Choose your payment method
Buy with Metablox Credit
Do you want to mint Blox with Metablox Credit?
Which Crypto would you like to use?
Purchase Confirmed!
Your Blox is being minted on-chain and will appear in your profile shortly.
Log in or sign up to claim your Blox.
How many credits do you want to buy?
$100 USD = 1 Metablox Credit = 1 Blox.
Use Metablox Credit to mint any Blox you want on the map.
expand_more